This page is for facilities managers who are weighing up an IWFM qualification and want proper answers before committing to study. They’re the questions FMs ask us most often, and every answer comes from Xenon’s trainers, the people who’ll be supporting you through the course.
Iwfm-qualifications
Which level is right for me?
Which IWFM level should I do: Level 3, 4, 5 or 6?
Pick the IWFM level that matches the job you do now. Level 3 suits people new to facilities management, Level 4 suits facilities managers running day-to-day operations, Level 5 suits senior and regional FMs, and Level 6 suits heads of FM and facilities directors who set strategy.
| Level | Who it suits | Typical role | Format options with Xenon | IWFM membership it supports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 3 | People new to FM, career changers, and some supervisors who want to formalise what they know | Facilities Assistant, Facilities Coordinator, Supervisor | Distance learning | Associate (AIWFM), with around 1 year’s experience |
| Level 4 | Managers responsible for day-to-day FM operations, and practical FMs stepping up into management | Senior Facilities Coordinator, Facilities Manager | Distance learning, or Qual-in-a-Week (Level 4 Award) | Member (MIWFM), with 2 years’ experience |
| Level 5 | Middle and senior managers running specialist functions, budgets, risk and teams | Senior Facilities Manager, Regional Facilities Manager | Distance learning | Member (MIWFM), with 2 years’ experience |
| Level 6 | Senior FM leaders responsible for strategy, governance, risk, procurement and financial performance | Head of FM, Facilities Director | Distance learning, or Qual-in-a-Week (Level 6 Award) | Certified (CIWFM), with a Level 6 Diploma, 2 years in the industry and 3 in management |
Not sure where you fit? Our One-Minute Leveller asks a few questions about your role and recommends a level.
The reason we push people to match the level to their current job is that every assignment asks you to apply the theory to your own workplace. If you’re a coordinator who’s never held a budget, a Level 5 unit on financial management will be hard going, because there’s nothing in your day job to draw on. Go the other way, and an experienced FM doing Level 3 will find most of it familiar and come away with a qualification that undersells them. Job titles in FM also vary wildly between organisations, so look at what you’re responsible for rather than what it says on your email signature. Someone called “Facilities Coordinator” at a small firm might be running the whole estate and be a good fit for Level 4 or 5. If the table and the Leveller still leave you torn between two levels, give us a call and one of the tutors will talk it through with you.
What’s the difference between an IWFM Award, Certificate and Diploma?
A useful way to think about it: the level (3, 4, 5 or 6) sets how senior the thinking is, and the Award, Certificate or Diploma sets how much ground you cover. So a Level 4 Award and a Level 4 Diploma are pitched at the same kind of role, the Diploma just takes you through far more of it. Plenty of the people we speak to have a training budget that stretches to an Award this year and not much more, and that’s a perfectly good place to start, because you come out with a recognised IWFM qualification and a much clearer idea of whether you want to go further. The Diploma is where you get into the areas many FMs don’t touch day to day, like procurement, finance or sustainability strategy, and those tend to be the ones that open doors later. Prices for each size are on our fees page.
Can I skip a level?
Most of the people who come to us aren’t starting from scratch. Many have been in FM for years, picked it up on the job, and now want something on paper that reflects what they already do. For them, starting at Level 3 would mean a year of studying things they already know. The flip side is that skipping ahead only works if your experience is there to back it up, so the more useful question is “what am I responsible for at work?”. If you’re running a team, managing contractors and dealing with budgets, Level 4 or 5 is probably your starting point regardless of what you’ve studied before.
Do I need to be working in facilities management to do an IWFM qualification?
We hear from a fair few people moving across from related fields, like property, hospitality, the forces, or office management, where they’ve been doing bits of FM without the title. Level 3 is a sensible route in for them. It gives you the vocabulary and the framework, and it pairs well with a first FM job. Level 4 can work for career changers too, if you’ve been managing people and operations somewhere else and can draw on that in your assignments. Where it gets difficult is Levels 5 and 6, which assume you’re making the kind of decisions a senior FM makes. If you’re not sure your background counts, tell us what you’ve been doing and we’ll give you an honest view.
Time and format
How many hours a week does an IWFM qualification take?
Treat five hours as a guide, and fit it into your week however suits you.
Some learners do an hour most evenings, others block out a Saturday morning and leave it at that. What tends to happen in FM is that study time gets squeezed by the job, so a summer shutdown project or the year-end budget round can wipe out a month, and then a quieter spell lets you catch up. That’s fine, and it’s why the two-year window is there. If you can give it more than five hours, you’ll finish sooner, and we’ve had learners with a bit of time between roles get through a Certificate well inside the typical range. If you’re working towards a promotion or a job application with a date attached, tell your tutor at the start and they’ll help you plan backwards from it.
Should I do IWFM distance learning or Qual-in-a-Week?
It mostly comes down to how you work and whether you can get a week out of the diary.
Some people know from experience that “I’ll do it in the evenings” won’t survive contact with their inbox, and a week away with the course as the only job is what gets it done. Others would much rather spread it out and fit it around work and family, and distance learning suits them better. Qual-in-a-Week is only available for the Award at Levels 4 and 6, so if you’re after a Certificate or Diploma, or you’re looking at Level 3 or 5, distance learning is the route. Courses run at ETC Venues Marble Arch and places are limited, so check the Qual-in-a-Week dates early if your employer needs notice to sign off the time.
What happens if I fall behind on my IWFM course?
Falling behind is normal, and our tutors would much rather hear about it early than find out when you’ve gone quiet for three months. A new job, a house move, a big project landing on your desk, a family thing, these all happen during a year-long course and nobody expects you to keep a perfect five hours a week through all of it.
When your tutor checks in, be honest about where you are and they’ll help you re-plan the remaining units so the finish line still feels realistic. The same applies to your assignments. We usually get learners to submit one task at a time rather than the whole assignment at once, and you can submit each task twice, so one rushed piece of work during a busy month isn’t the end of it.
In the very rare case that someone still doesn’t pass, they can move down to a smaller size, from Diploma to Certificate or from Certificate to Award, so they still come away with a qualification. And if you’re coming up to the end of the two years and something has gone badly wrong, talk to us before the deadline rather than after.
What course materials do you get with a Xenon IWFM course?
The workbook is the core of each unit, and the webinar is there for anyone who takes things in better by watching and listening, or who wants a second explanation of a tricky topic. A lot of learners use both: watch the webinar on a lunch break to get the gist, then work through the workbook properly when they sit down to study. The assessment guidance notes are the bit people tend to skip and then wish they hadn’t, because they spell out exactly what each assignment question is looking for.
The extra library is optional, but it’s handy when you want a real-world example or some extra reading to back up a point in your assignment. If you’d like to see what a workbook looks like before you sign up, you can request a sample from any of our course pages.
Assessment and support
How are IWFM qualifications assessed? Are there exams?
“Essay-based” puts some people off, especially if the last essay they wrote was at school. In practice, most of what you’re writing about is your own workplace: how your organisation handles health and safety, how you manage contractors, what you’d change about the way performance is measured.
You know that material better than anyone, and the assignment is asking you to look at it through the lens of the unit. Learners split fairly evenly between those who read everything first and then write, and those who answer a question as soon as they’ve covered the relevant section. Either works. You can also send your tutor work in progress for interim feedback before final submission, and if writing isn’t the best way for you to show what you know, talk to us about alternatives such as audio or video submissions or a professional discussion.
Can you fail an IWFM qualification?
The worry about failing usually comes from people who haven’t studied in a while, and it’s understandable when you’re putting your own time, and often your employer’s money, into a qualification. When an assignment falls short, the most common reason is that someone has described what happens at work without linking it back to the theory, or has answered three of the four parts of a question. A tutor can easily spot either problem on a draft, which is why we’d always encourage you to use the interim feedback rather than going straight for final submission.
The guidance notes for each unit also help here, because they show what a complete answer needs to cover. We usually get learners to submit one task at a time rather than the whole assignment at once, and each task can be submitted twice, so one weak answer doesn’t sink the unit. In the very rare case that someone still doesn’t pass, they can move down to a smaller size, from Diploma to Certificate or from Certificate to Award, so they still come away with a recognised qualification.
What support do you get from Xenon during an IWFM course?
Distance learning has a reputation for being lonely, and the personal tutor is there to make sure it isn’t. The questions they get aren’t only about course content either. A lot of it is practical: how do I fit this around a new job, which unit should I do next, is this paragraph answering the question or am I waffling.
The regular check-ins matter more than people expect, because it’s easy to let a course drift when work gets busy and nobody’s asking how it’s going. Having someone who notices and gets in touch is often what gets people back on track. Our tutors are FM people themselves, so when you’re trying to apply a unit to something awkward at your site, they’ve usually seen something similar.
Choosing a training provider
Is Xenon Group a good IWFM training provider?
Of course we’d say we’re good, so we’d rather you didn’t take our word for it. Read the Trustpilot reviews, and if you know anyone who’s done an IWFM qualification, ask them who they studied with and what the support was like. Whoever you look at, the things worth checking are the same: who your tutor will be and how easy they are to reach, what the materials look like (ask for a sample), how long you get to finish, and whether the provider only does FM or fits it in alongside lots of other subjects.
Facilities management is all we do, and our course content is reviewed regularly so it keeps up with how the profession changes. Organisations across the sector also send their FM teams to us.
Chris Morris – Xenon Group Director
Chris has spent the past 15 years working in the field of Facilities Management training and qualifications, teaching facilities managers how to be the best they can be.
A strategist and creative thinker, Chris is also a former chair of the IWFM Rising FMs group, a contributor to Facilitate magazine and iFM.net and a firm believer in the value of identifying and developing the strengths of an organisation’s people.
